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If you watched the senate hearings this acticle got the information from it is that the OVERALL average is at 3.8% of budget. But they identified four states that drove that up by their much higher cost plus the fact that some have not paid into the pension plans last year and one that passed bonds to pay this year.Most to are fine but of course the insurances plan costs make those seem small.That is where the really challenge coming for most both private and public. Terms of insurance will be under going alot of changes.
FYI this was looming issue before the financial crisis, that just made it worse.
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Originally Posted by thecoalman
That's another thing, if they are basing this on current numbers they would probably be accurate. We are only at the start of this, and it's going to worse.
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Originally Posted by rbohm
i agree to a point, right now the lavish pensions, and lavish health care benefits are not going to bankrupt the states, and if things were to remain the same from here on out in regards to how much is paid out, then no it wont bankrupt the states in the future. the problem is that pensions are going up, and health care costs are going up, and state workers are not paying much at all, far less than half of what their private sector counterparts are paying, and that WILL bankrupt the states.
having the state workers pay more for their retirement and health care needs to happen now, and, in my opinion, the public unions need to be eliminated and let the civil service laws already on the books determine what the public employees should be paying. public employees should never have been allowed to form a union, and should never have been allowed to collectively bargain for wages and benefits.
You people are a hoot. Maybe you should read before you post:
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***Pension contributions from state and local employers aren’t blowing up budgets. They amount to just 2.9 percent of state spending, on average, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College puts the figure a bit higher at 3.8 percent.
***Nor are state and local government pension funds broke. .
Boston College researchers project that if the assets in state and local pension plans were frozen tomorrow and there was no more growth in investment returns, there’d still be enough money in most state plans to pay benefits for years to come.
***Defenders of the public pension system say anti-government, anti-union elected officials and interest groups have exaggerated the problem to score political points, and that as the economy heals, public pension plans will gain value and prove critics wrong.
***“There’s a window that’s closing as market conditions improve and interest rates rise, the funding of these plans is going to look better than depicted by some,” insisted Keith Brainard, the director of research for the National Association of State Retirement Administrators in Georgetown, Texas.
***Also fueling backlash is the perception that state and local workers don’t contribute to their own retirement funds the way private sector workers do.In fact, only four states have non-contribution public pension plans— one of them being Florida. The others are Utah, Oregon and Connecticut.
But, hey, don't let a little thing like FACTS get in the way of what you BELIEVE.
You people are a hoot. Maybe you should read before you post:
LOL, I've been reading about it for years, long before now. Our local paper had articles on this going 4 or 5 years back. This isn't an issue that has just suddenly appeared.
Let me put this into perspective for you, the projected increases per year could cover the entire yearly budget for Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and we have a lot of roads in PA!
There's still the $5 billion the other pension is behind which is going to increase. We're not talking small potatoes at least in my state as this article would imply.
Wisconsin has 300,000 public service workers. If each get a pension of say, $30k a year for 20 years, that is $180,000,000,000.00 (180 billion) paid out over those 20 years. Yes, I think it is time for public workers to save for their own retirement.
If you read the article, you will discover that there are only 4 states in which employees do not contribute.
Can you tell me how much state employees contribute toward their pensions in Wisconsin and Ohio? I don't know but I do know that the people in those states don't think the number is more than zero. When all this stuff started for some reason the Wisconsin government was talking about those teachers, and only the teachers, getting something like $32,000 per annum from the tax payers for their benefits that were health insurance and pension. That seems to be a rather hefty amount.
Also, I wonder if Walker's plan offered by the Wisconsin Senate did anything other than ask the teachers to contribute about 20% to their plans. Not a very hefty amount considering that the government is paying it now and no private union is getting anything like that in the state. I guess some people really do believe that the state can make money with taxation but it seems to me that the tax payers are paying all of that. Also, those same taxpayers are paying for the inflated prices they buy from private union costs to the people who do the paying. That is another thing to discuss, though.
"A sampling of data from 2008 reveals much trouble ahead if states do not undertake fundamental reform of pension systems. Illinois comes in with the worst funded pension plan in the nation at 46.1 percent. Private defined-benefit pension plans are deemed to be "critical" if the funded portion of the plan is less than 65 percent.
"The underfunding of public pension plans has become the 900-pound gorilla in the area of state budgets," said State Senator Jim Buck of Indiana, Chair of ALEC's Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force. "If legislators do not properly address the crisis in public pensions, it will make current budget problems in the states look trivial." "
You people are a hoot. Maybe you should read before you post:
But, hey, don't let a little thing like FACTS get in the way of what you BELIEVE.
I find that your article is primarily about Florida and what is said against your governor. I want to talk about the state where the real trouble is that union employees, (teachers) where asked to contribute a small percentage to their pension fund and didn't see any mention of the contributing at all now. I think that once the Fleebaggers get their way and come back something can be done. Of course, the out-of-state union members will have to go home and allow the Wisconsin people talk it out without them being around to "protest".
It is the union monopolies ability to levy a tax on the taxpayer, or hold the tax payer hostage, if they don't pay up.
Exactly. Which is why people are so fed up with public unions. How hard is it for some to understand? No one wants to pay for someone else's damn retirement when they have to pay for their own.
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