Slashdot Mirror
Khan Academy: the Future of Taxpayer Reeducation?
theodp writes "Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has launched a website and gone social on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to educate taxpayers on why they must make good on pension promises to state workers. And, in addition to Squeezy the Pension Python, Gov. Quinn is enlisting the help of Khan Academy, the tax-exempt, future-of-education organization funded by tax-free millions from Google, Bill Gates, and others, to help convince taxpayers that a state-pension-promise is a promise. In the Khan Academy video commissioned by the Governor, Illinois Pension Obligations, Sal Khan concedes that the annual annuity payouts for IL state employee retirees do look 'pretty reasonable' — e.g., $43,591 for the average teacher, $117,558 for a judge — but goes on to argue that 'in all fairness, this was promised to these people,' who he speculates 'probably took lower compensation while they were working,' 'probably stayed in the jobs longer,' and 'probably sacrificed other things' to get these 'great benefits.' 'We're delighted to have his [Khan's] help in enlightening Illinois citizens about how the pension problem came to be,' said the Governor. Of course, not everything can be explained in one video — perhaps other contributing factors like 'pension spiking', lobbyists' maneuvers, sweetheart deals, creative job reclassification, golden parachutes, bruising investment losses, and other wacky pension games will be taught in Illinois Pension Obligations II!"
Is it really a good thing for Khan to be involved in politics?
Jesus H. Christ, not even Wikipedia has a link-to-word ratio this high.
if you think that everyone will believe everything they see on the internet i have a bridge in brooklyn to sell you
So now that Khan Academy has gone political (I guess it always somewhat was but is now overtly political) I can scratch it off my list for good.
Seriously, I would like one fucking place to go that doesn't involve fucking politicians telling me what to fucking do. Just ONE place.
If Khan would like to go over these issues, do it in a political science course, do it in a history course but do it in the past tense as a learning resource. Don't sell the fuck out to political parties and destroy your credibility.
Enlist an educational facility (regardless of what type it is) to run your re-education campaign.
Listen, whether you are for the public education or against it or have no opinion on it one way or another, you have to admit that this type of action by the Governor is questionable at the least.
Personally I advice everybody to take a step back and ask themselves this question: did I promise anything to anybody? Did I promise to be a tax slave in a system that was set up without any of my participation? Did I vote back then when Teddy Roosevelt and FDR and Hoover and Nixon and Carter and everybody in between, all the rest of the socialists were pushing for their agenda?
OK, so if YOU voted for it, you may feel some form of obligation to pay for it. However tens to hundreds of millions of unsuspected individuals were born and died and were born again in a system that fleeced them dry, prevented the economy from working with these exact types of policies.
You should be opposed to any of this on the general principle alone, never mind the fact that you have no money to do any of it.
The unfunded liabilities to all the pensioners in the system, the SS and Medicare and then State liabilities, they are running around 222 Trillion dollars in USA (that's not the 16 Trillion public debt, it's something else, and it's not the contingency liabilities, most or all of which will hit once the real fiscal grand canyon takes place).
No no no, do not let yourself to be re-educated this way. You can think whatever you want, but you didn't sign for it unless of-course you were the one voting for any politician who promised it.
The people who voted for Barry Goldwater DID NOT SIGN UP FOR IT. The people who voted for Ron Paul and Gary Johnson DID NOT SIGN UP FOR IT.
In fact even the people who voted for Reagan didn't sign up for any of it, though he still ended up fleecing them.
Don't fall for it, in fact consider your options of moving OUT OF ILLINOIS very very carefully, because the taxes will be going up and the economy of that state will be collapsing all on its own, never mind the union.
You can't handle the truth.
Even though I agree with Khan and the Illinois governor that state pension plans are promises that shouldn't be broken (unless the state goes bankrupt and gets bailed out), I don't like the idea of paying someone to give an opinion or educational video. In such a case it will always be doubtful what the real opinion of the paid presenter is.
I'm not sure about Illinois, but in California, the problem isn't current pension payouts. The problem is the payouts we've promised to future retirees are sorely underfunded. In the late 90s the state legislature made the calculation that the stock market would keep going up and up, and expected that the DOW would be around 30,000 right now. Add to the problem that CALPERS hasn't made the best investments, and California has a $500billion unfunded liability.
Note that if any CEO of a company managed retirement funds like the state legislature does, he/she would be in jail. I don't know if Illinois has a similar problem, but I do know enough about politicians to think Governor Quinn is not telling the whole truth.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In addition to "Squeezy the Pension Python" you can star as "Fuckyou the Pus-bag Politician" because, let's face it, you sociopaths just won't learn when to stop squeezing us to further your slimy careers.
How about politician re-education? Starting with staying within a budget?
Also the taxpayers made no such promises. The politicians promised money belonging to others (taxpayers) with no say from the taxpayer (deals made between public employee unions and politicians). Since the politicians made the promises, then they can pay with THEIR OWN MONEY. A reasonable pension is one thing but there is much abuse in the system and I dont support the current system.
he speculates 'probably took lower compensation while they were working,'
A long time ago this was true. Public employees accepted lower salaries in exchange for job security, great benefits, and more holidays. But here in the wonderful 21st century, they kept all their bonuses AND get paid more.
When the economy is good, both public and private salaries rise. But when it's bad, the private sector has layoffs and wage freezes. But the government is working with your money, not their own, and has no problem voting themselves raises.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2010-08-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm
This is a severe case of political editing, Note that the video is cut off to the "relevant" part.
Khan doesn't make suggestions, he just presents facts. The closest he comes to being "political" is claiming that the good benefits for retirees is due to them taking smaller pay, etc. That is notably without statistics, but he does say that the people agreed to such benefits when they were hired and thus why they are liabilities, both in the fiscal sense and now, since they worked expecting it, in the sense of the word.
In any case, he doesn't champion certain new cuts or taxes; the majority of the video is informative, not argumentative--actually, none of it is.
Captcha:defraud.
Perhaps if politicians hadn't made promises they should have known the public wouldn't support in the name of self-same public while pocketing campaign contributions from those who benefited the most from those promise, the public would not be desiring to repudiate those promises now that they are finding out exactly what the politicians promised.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Meh, why haven't pensions obligations been set aside?? This is the reason public pensions are fail. Instead of saving up for retirement, they kick the can down to their ascendants.
Since this is Slashdot, of course the description is inaccurate. The videos explain how pensions work and why Illinois faces such a problem but the video is not explicitly polemic as the summary maintains.
When Illinois goes completely broke and the taxpayers refuse to pay the burden, we'll see if all this crap in their system doesn't get cleaned out. But we don't have to worry about that today, that is somebody else's problem.
There is a simple and minimaly painful solution to underfunded and overpromised pensions in an environment of state budgets that are negative and not looking good soon. We just went through a period of deflation as evidenced by dropping home values. Public pensions and wages did not have that, but rather pay increases over that period. Despite the known fact they are by far the largest factor in ALL local, county, and state government insolvency. ALL. Nationwide.
The solution is a one time -10% COLA on public employee salaries and pensions, yes pensions, kicking in 1/3 a year for 3 years. That will lower the "base" on which future salaries and pensions are calculated and will make a HUGE tail wags the dog impact on governmental solvency.
I would further suggest FUNDING public and private pensions with special FED bonds at 1% for 50 years. The proceeds can be managed by the pension funds themselves to achieve the typical 5% returns they see now.
Real people and businesses with cash money can also do that right now. irvineeconometrics.com
If you care enough, you will type it in not merely click on it. $100k+.
The solution has been posted to an obscure internet site, thread and post.
JJ
The problem with Illinois pensions isn't the level of benefits. It's that the legislature has been underfunding the pensions for more than 20 years. Legislators and governors have kept tax rates low and spent most of the tax revenues on the general budget, always promising to catch up on pension contributions "next year." As a result, the state's retirement system is now only 36 percent funded. Decent pension fund management would keep it around 80 percent funded. In addition, the legislature gave the state all the responsibility for making pension payments for all local school districts in Illinois except the city of Chicago, letting those places keep property taxes lower rather than taking some responsibility for the pensions they negotiate.
And if unions convince a corrupt or incompetent legislature to make impossible promises? A corporation that did that would just go bankrupt and start over and the promise would have to be adjusted. This does happen. I think states have to have a similar option.
These exact same things happen in the private sector and you know what we do? We either put up with it or we move on to another job.
I'm so fucking tired of the public sector employees whining about their benefits dwindling while ALL sectors face the same problem.
Just so you know, I have THE WORST possible insurance provided by Blue Cross Blue Shield of MN. I was already paying $500/month for the pleasure. Next year it goes up to $845/month. Am I whining? No, I'm looking for a new job.
'in all fairness, this was promised to these people,'
It's easy to promise money, especially when it's not your own money.
That is the nature of Government; it confiscates resources under threat of violence and then squanders them. Government is a bad company that won't go out of business because it can force you to pay for goods and services even if you don't want them or even if you know they won't be fulfilled.
"Commissioned Study" is politician-speak for "Take my opinion, find some numbers that agree with it, omit ones that don't, and release it as a third party so it looks like other people agree with me."
Why should politician's promises about pensions be any different than any of their other promises?
No, legislators promised them. Legislators elected with the help, support, and money of the government employee unions. What you call a "promise", I call a "crime".
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
By all means pay currently owed pensions out. However I see no reason why pension benefits cannot be cut for current or future workers, or work requirements extended.
Actually I see no reason why we shouldn't just buy out all accrued benefits for current government workers and eliminate pensions entirely. They can get a 401k and IRA like everyone else.
Commissioned Studies do not always take the side of the politicians that created them. Those politicians down play or bury studies they don't like; the ones that go their way are promoted. There are bad and good studies and you can find bad scientists to back creationism or smoking too. If their data is openly published one could investigate it... or if they have projections if those come out accurate (thinking of the recent election, where most the mainstream was dead wrong and none lost their jobs.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I can think of all kinds of people with some silly opinion that want to call it educational but at some point it is propaganda. I could create a mathematically correct lesson on linear algebra that also disparages some group purely sticking to factual data.
At the same time there is factual data that some may want to hide because of embarrassment that has educational value. So the hard question is the motivation of the offense not the offended. People living in Quebec were offended when a magazine recently pointed out how corrupt their province is; yet the recent huge corruption scandal shows that it is really really corrupt relative to Canadian standards. So if I create an offensive math lesson it probably means that offensive propaganda was the goal and thus the lesson should be eliminated. If I create a lesson on topical Quebec politics which if done correctly will be embarrassing to Quebeckers it should stay.
So the intent of this union "Lesson" appears to be propaganda so regardless of any factual content it should be eliminated.
What you fucking former-soviet block knuckleheads can't seem to get through your pre-educated skulls is that living in the United States is a voluntary arrangement. Unlike the former Soviet Union (In Soviet Russia government is leaving you!), current China, Saudi Arabia (at least for women) and so many other totalitarian regimes
We have more people, many more, who want to come here (the west) than those who keep posting their empty promises to wah. wah, wah, take their toys (earned with the backing of the blood and treasure of US citizens) and go somewhere where, snif, their crazy ideas will be appreciated.
Just go. Just fucking shut up and go.
ironic captcha: appeases
And the people be damned.
That's what happens when you get public employee unions with forced membership funneling dues back to bribes, errr, political contributions. It wouldn't surprise me if the single entity contributing the most money to political campaigns is forced-membership public-employee unions.
Thus we get unaffordable benefits to unionized government employees. And the non-government employee taxpayers get royally screwed.
Do some research one what progressives like FDR thought of allowing government employees to unionize.
Screw you. -- signed: Everyone
You saw what happened when USSR made more promises than they could keep. We are so not immune. Only 25 years late.
health care should not be tied to jobs that is a big part of costs of employing people.
Pension plans are SALARY! Benefits come out from the salary, DUH!! FACT.
Pension plans are a technique for employers to pay LESS salary: they offer a higher net salary than they actually pay. If it helps, think of how the lottery can offer twice the winnings by spreading it out over 30 years using a pension-like fund.
I do not use the fire dept. I gladly pay for it because I MAY need them. I complain about their waste of funds but I also realize that we have minimal fire coverage and any disaster would require outside assistance... So I do not advocate cutting their funding. I know why they hold onto funds when they get them and never want it to go down... I've seen how money is stolen from budgets to play shell games...
The LOUDEST government waste people are usually the biggest problem! This is why we continually elect morons who make things worse and campaign on the complaints about the messes THEY CREATE. Yes, this means the voters get proper representation...that represents them, the moronic public. I'm not being partisan, but in recent years it is quite obvious with one side taking it so extreme that even their supporters notice it but instead of thinking they get emotionally defensive.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If I were a member of a union I would want a new union with a new pension plan. Many of these pensions made massive promises in the past and now a bunch of boomers are, at least in theory, looking at pretty good pensions. Yet now that the time has come to pay out these pensions the real costs are coming due and they are looking both to the taxpayer and to the existing members to pay these old pensions while negotiating far lesser pensions with the new members. The new members pension fees are typically far higher while their eventual payouts are far lower.
The next problem comes from the baby boom itself. There is a huge bulge of retirees requesting their pensions but they are requesting pensions at the same time that there is a huge bulge of taxpayers retiring as well. Again typically these were higher paying jobs while the new typical taxpayer is getting crap with no pensions. These are not anti union rants, these are cold hard facts. More cold hard facts are that these same boomers are requiring more medical care and on top of all that are more likely to vote and there are a lot of them. So you are seeing more voting along the lines of free this or low cost that for the elderly such as free buses, or even seemingly innocuous things like lower speed limits (which hinder commerce). What you don't see are things like property taxes going up to pay for these services.
This union demanding that they get what they were promised does not need some anti union statement to attack it. The union even having to demand what they were promised is a sure sign of a much larger issue. A boomer cadre are going to relentlessly retire in droves every year for the next 20 years. They are going to both need more in the form of medical and geriatric care and demand more simply because they can. Yet the numbers of workers that they are demanding this from are growing smaller and smaller and through crappy minimum wage laws, higher costs of living, the difficulty of getting a mortgage on a first home, etc these fewer people have even less to give. At some point this is going to crack. It is no problem for a government assembly to vote on something impossible but regardless of how hard they wish they cannot make it possible. What they can do is wreck themselves trying to make the impossible possible. It quickly becomes the story of the Dutch boy and the dyke and soon the dutch boy runs out of fingers.
Another symptom that will be interesting to watch will be those locations with more young people and few boomers having past promises will certainly thrive while those places with the highest liabilities will either stagnate or take the bull by the horns and do something drastic such as let pensions go bankrupt. In Canada this would be Alberta. I don't know the official number but looking around I would say the average age is 40 or less. Plus Alberta does not go for the nanny type laws. Lots of families with kids. Looking around Nova Scotia I would say the average age is 70, few kids but lots of Nanny type laws such as skiing now requires a helmet. One part of Nova Scotia known as Cape Breton is particularly union friendly, is particularly aged, and is particularly poor. Taxes are high in NS and low in Alberta and this is a trend I don't see changing. What I do see coming is a point when the older parts of Canada start making impossible demands on Alberta and one day it says "NO". That is going to be an interesting day in Canadian history.
Is still a check you can't cash. You may want to keep your promises all you want. When you don't have the money to pay for something you promised, good intentions and honor will not magically make you pay for it.
I have no illusions about my retirement as a teacher. Like most teachers, I'll work until I drop dead or get shot by some drug-addled shave-head over some girl with tattoos, enough shrapnel in her face to imitate a 50's Dodge, and holes in her earlobes big enough to drive an SUV through who probably won't grace me with her charming presence that particular day. Neither of these two could possibly benefit from an education, because they will have so ruined themselves that Walmart will consider them an iffy employee.
Barring that, I expect that I will get screwed in some manner like raising the retirement age to the point of fossilization, or reduction of benefits below the levels that have already been lowered. Of the teachers that I know have retired, many die within a year of retirement. Others are still working as subs, because the Social Security minus the Pension is too low to survive on.
If you don't hold it, you don't own it. If its denominated in dollars, your wealth is tied to the strength of the US economy. Social security is a ponzi scheme, it relies on a flawed idea of perpetual population growth.
This isn't your father/grandfather's economy anymore and the idea of working at the same factory for 50 years isn't realized anymore. Whether that is a good/bad thing is irrelevant. Because of this, we need to go away from social security, pensions, 401(k)s and insurance tied to work. Instead, we should focus on paying employees a larger paycheck and allow them to save for retirement in their own way. By having company-based pension funds it leads to stress when 10 years before you are supposed to retire the company goes bankrupt, the pension fund loses money, or the pension gets altered/cut in some way. Instead, with a retirement plan that you create, you know how it is doing, you know what you have for the future, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Sorry, but between pensions, social security, and a giant medicare squeeze under way it will not be possibly to meet all of the empty promises that have been made over decades.
Someone is going to HAVE to lose out, to not get all of what they promised. The coming fight is who is going to be left holding the bag.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The government doesn't keep its promises to civilians why should government workers fare any better? The pensions are too generous. Gut the system.
The one who got fired by late Chicago mayor Harold "Mirth & Girth" Washington for nothing less than "incompetence".
The one who orchestrated increased state dipping into taxpayer pockets by 60% this year and managed to literally blow it all away on kickbacks to his SEIU buddies.
Tell me about what he think is right - it's rock-solid endorsement for exactly opposite course of action.
p.s Google "Mirth & Girth" - prime time entertainment.
Hey, as long as it's not a camp, it's better than what some people expect.
Look, I completely understand the "why should those damn government employees get a good pension" strain of thought. The best arguments against that have been made by others (especially the "they took lower pay for years for pensions later" point of view).
Consider this: if you take away government employees' pensions now, the people who have served in the affected agencies are being told that rather than have a semi-secure retirement, they'll probably be eating cat food soon. Perhaps from a pothole in the street. This will not make them happy. And you know what they will do?
They will fuck you.
Sure, most government employees will just take it. They have families. They can't risk what little is left to them. But there are in any organization some people who won't have much left to lose. Gov IT has an awful lot of older bachelors running things. Think how much info about you is in government computers. Perhaps some of that info will start... disappearing. Not en masse, that would be too obvious. Not all at once.
Image going to the drivers' license bureau to renew your license... and you can't. You're not in the computer. They know nothing about you. So obviously that piece of plastic in your hand is a fake. Fake IDs are against the law, didn't you know that? Looks like you're visiting the local jail for a while. Sure, maybe the person at the desk knows exactly what is wrong... but you took her pension away, why the fuck should she help you? Yeah, that cop that is stationed there at the DMV just to arrest people like you who show up not knowing they have warrants open against them -- maybe he knows your license is legit, too. But hey, you took his pension away. So off to jail you go.
Did you take the judges' pensions, too?
Imagine a one month disruption of welfare payments in a major U.S. city (money comes from feds, sure... but admin'd by the states, ain't it?). How much of the place will be left standing after the food riots?
Is this blackmail? Extortion? Maybe.. so what? The employees won't be able to hit back against the politicians... so they'll hit back against YOU.
They've been promised compensation all the while they worked, for decades and decades for the older ones. Now you want to take it away? I assure you, you will pay. One way or another, we will all pay.
It goes something like this.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
"... Convince must make good on pension promise..."? More like trying to wiggle out of same. And put the blame on state workers if they can't. Illinois state politicians, of both parties, have deliberately and knowingly been underfunding the state's pension fund for decades. After all, there were pet projects and welfare to fund and elections to be won by failing to talk about financial reality. Now, they face two problems. 1) The Illinois constitution, rewritten around 1970, literally says that benefits already earned cannot be taken away, period. There are law firms that would love to represent the state to try to get around that, billing the state millions for what would ultimately fail in court after years in court. When one of the still living authors of the constitution was asked by the legislature as to why that language was in there, his response was basically to laugh and respond "because we saw you coming". 2) With Democrats now controlling the state and Chicago, there's also the problem of how to shaft state workers, most of whom are union (not necessarily voluntarily), while still claiming to be "labor friendly" and "for the little guy". Perhaps if they wrap it up as both tax reduction and welfare expansion, mutually exclusive of course but why go there, they can try to get away with trying to do it and still label themselves as the good guys. I may be wrong, but what I think I'm beginning to read between the lines is that the politicians are starting to realize that while they can reduce pension promises going forward, they are stuck with having to deliver on those already earned. So, they'll make some effort at, then kick the can on down the road for the next decades to have to deal with. Makes me proud to be an Illinois citizen.
Hate to have to say this about Illinois Governor Quinn.
I don't think Illinois Governor Quinn intends to honor any promises made to Illinois retirees. Typically, retirees took below market wages for decades in exchange for promises of a decent pension with cost of living (COLA) increases to partially compensate for inflation, and paid health insurance. Employees had to accept hefty deductions for the pension itself and additional deductions to fund a COLA. The State was supposed to match those contributions. In addition, many employees were asked to forgo eligibility for Social Security. This was so the State wouldn't have to kick in their required Social Security contribution.
I've read the legislation Quinn and his allies have been trying to run through. He wants to sock retirees with the full cost of health insurance, and make them forgo their COLA. Some of these retirees are making less than $12,000 annually, and may not be able to keep their homes if Quinn's proposals go through. Governor Quinn asked the families of retirees to talk to them over Thanksgiving dinner. My kids told me that I should not agree to give up any part of my retirement benefits. They weren't sure they could afford to support me. They said I should not trust Governor Quinn.
It turns out that the State hasn't been making their matching contributions, and in some cases the State may actually have side-tracked employee deducted contributions. In addition, the State of Illinois has been promising tax breaks to wealthy corporations - promises they can't make good on if they have to pay what they owe retirees.
Every business transaction involves risk even a promise from a government. Governments like all human endeavors imperfect. Thats life.
Compared to the private sector, government workers are very difficult to fire--they have the best job security available anywhere. Therefore, government workers should receive lower retirement benefits.
Maybe they need to be sent to reeducation centers as well.
Someone is going to HAVE to lose out, to not get all of what they promised. The coming fight is who is going to be left holding the bag.
Which is how Ponzi schemes always end. But you knew that.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Which is how Ponzi schemes always end. But you knew that.
I recommend anyone who doesn't know that watch the end of any Mission Impossible TV episode, where the mark comprehends they've been had... that look on his/her face? That is you, before you know it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If these 'educators' USED VERY LOOSELY paid attention in the 16-18+ years of school they sat through they should know that bankruptcy would make any promised benefit null and void, or at best open to renegotiation.
The Civics lesson is that when the government enters into a contract with an individual that it cannot then decide later on that it doesn't liked the contract and legislate to undo it.
Why not?
There's this thing in the world called bankruptcy. It's a backdrop to contract negotiation. It basically says that if I make a contract with you that is so bad that you can't sustain the contract, you get to get out of honoring the contract.
Just because, 10, 15 or 20 years ago, a group of employees managed to convince a politician to give them a contract that no reasonable party could expect to be maintained doesn't mean that now, 20 years later, we can't say, "That was ridiculous. It's going to bankrupt the state and we have to undo it."
Illinois is a particularly good (bad?) example of this. Many years ago teachers convinced politicians to set up a state-paid teacher retirement system. And they put in things like a formula where the school districts pay into the system based on the salary of the teacher that year, but the retirement payments paid to the teachers (and administrators, superintendents and others are in the same plan) are based only on the highest-paid 4 years of each participants career.
I'll give to 15 seconds to figure out what happened.
That's right, unions and administrators all started negotiating contracts where the school district gave participants huge raises in the 4 years before their retirement. Didn't cost the school district much in retirement plan contributions (they're only paying the higher rate for the last 4 years of a 30-year career) and the participants get a huge benefit - a much larger pension for the remaining 20 to 40 years of their lives.... paid for by the state aka the taxpayers.
When you get down to it, it's just a short step away from a conspiracy to steal money from the taxpayers of the state, and at some point the taxpayers are going to put a stop to it.
paintball
A union is a money grabbing entity that ruins anything it get its hands on eventually. People always point to corporations as evil, but Unions are the bigger evil. Make any state union benefit be voted on on election day instead of putting in the hands of a politician who don't care about cost. But fine, try to "educate" people, states like California it will not matter if people know its important to keep promises, when you have no money, there is no choice.
With investment proceeds inherently uncertain, in a defined benefit scheme (ie where the pension is agreed up front and not directly related to the amount contributed nor the returns) someone always gets screwed. Its usually the taxpayer as the schemes are usually too generous, but sometimes its the employee.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
I thought the department of war consumed 40% of revenue. I know healthcare and social security are close behind. So shuffling money between these 3 areas is required to balance the books. More importantly; military spending unlike pensions and welfare is always paid in advance.
I agree that employees promised pensions deserve to receive pensions.
I am disappointed in this platform.
The public sector employee says, "They are cutting my pension".
The private sector employee then says, "What's a pension?"
Goodbye pensions, hello 401ks
Pensions should be outlawed.
Until this decade, an Illinois state employee could retire after X years (and could buy out 5 years, and minus any years in the US military) then take another state job and work the same number of years again in order to get not one pension with extra years on it but two full pensions.
Government bosses are happy to agree on payments that will come do after they leave office. The Government employees know this so they negotiate these nice package. That doesn't make it the right thing for taxpayers or those that come later that have to foot the bill.
So you and the rest of Illinois have been living with lower taxes and higher benefits than you could afford at the expense of your future benefits. It sounds like a choice that the voters have been re-validating for the last 20 years. Aren't the voters asking to get paid on both ends?
Try life in the "Dreaded Private Sector" and see if you like that...
I nominate the wealthy. Bring taxes to Eisenhower levels and live happily ever after.
a moral issue, like slavery, where the majority is using the vote of the mob to discriminate against a minority
indeed, your open embrace of slavery does put you in a minority. odd, how you don't seem to realize the hypocrisy in the matter - you want the small minority to have the right to discriminate against and oppress the majority.
Pensions are an unknown cost which makes them very difficult to budget. For instance, you want to hire a new teacher, it is impossible to know how much that teacher will be compensated by the pension over the years. This compensation depends on how your investments perform over the years.
Pensions are a guaranteed benefit (payout). This is very different that a 401k or 457 which are defined contribution. Once the employer pays a 401k or 457, they are no longer required to pay any more money. If the stock market does not provide the expected return for a pension, the tax payers are required to pay the difference.
This means that the a pension is an insured investment with tax payers being the insurers. It is very rare that money is set aside for this insurance. This is similar to self insuring your house while having a mortgage. If something happens to the house you will be bankrupt.
Then 90-100% of that would be 60-66%.
Remember: the state worker gets a smaller paypacket than they'd get if they worked private.
YOU are thinking of the 100% of YOUR salary. Not 100% of THEIRS.
THEY get paid $10,000. Their pension would be $9-10,000
YOU get paid for the same wor $15,000. YOUR pension at 66% would be $10,000
Would you jump at paying 5 grand a year for your working life to fund a pension that gets you 66% of your salary?
And see if you like that.
Tell me, if you paid 1/3 of your salary to a pension scheme privately, would you expect a payout around 2/3 of your salary at the end of it or more?
Because that is approximately what happens in the state sector.
You get paid less and the difference (or at least some of it) goes to a pension pot.
However, rather than keep the pot brimming, the politicians at the state thought they'd underfund the works that the populace demanded (because they also demanded it for free) and make up the difference in what they took from the pension pot.
Well you spend decades being charged less for your government than you owed, but now it comes time to pay it back, you whine about how it's "your money"???
Seriously, if even 1/10th of the difference in salary (like for like) had been paid into the pot AND LEFT IN THERE, the pensions would be fine.
If Khan's goal is to bring awareness to the government pension problems, then he should do a video describing the difference between the pension system and a Ponsi scheme (if there is any).