Taxpayers: Eat your hearts out, suckers

CALIFORNIA
A looming problem has received far too little coverage from a liberal-dominated media: the power of public pensions to destroy our nation's finances and ransack our wallets.

For many years, government workers have enjoyed munificent benefits: relatively high salaries for lenient work demands; gold-plated retirement benefits that allow most of them to "retire" at a young age with very high pensions and generous health care benefits.

All courtesy of us: the lowly taxpayer toiling away at jobs that may vanish at a moment's notice and that certainly don't guarantee the value of any retirement package, none of which is true for the ever-expanding ranks of government workers.

A recent Forbes magazine article highlights the absurd benefits that public sector workers enjoy on the job and off the job when they retire. The article, describing the leisurely life of retired government employees, could be lifted from the pages of Travel and Leisure magazine.

The poster boy for the problem? A retired 42 year old policeman lollygagging on a beach, comfortable with his $2 million pension.

But there are more tales from across our land: a fireman who can be "retired" at 55, collect a pension and still collect a salary while keeping the job he "retired" from; a thirty eight year old teacher in New Jersey earning twice the state‘s average income who works 10 months a year and barely contributes to a pension that will allow early retirement with quite the golden nest egg; California prison guards earning $300,000 a year.

In my own area, the superintendent of a small, suburban school district earns -- well, makes -- over $400,000 a year and has a slew of benefits to boot. Remember that story when teachers' unions decry low salaries.

These anecdotal stories of staggering benefits received by the government worker elites are companied by reams of statistics that display the ticking time bomb of government salaries and golden parachutes... [snip]

Their pensions are guaranteed by state law, regardless of how pension investments perform [just like our 401ks, right?], because you, the taxpayer, guarantee them with your tax dollars. It is the law, made by our legislators with the 'support' of government employee labor unions.

How bad is the problem? This "Hidden Pension Fiasco" will cost us over one trillion dollars... [snip]

Of course, the key point is the need to make our elected representatives themselves pay for the steps they have taken over the years to enrich public unions at our expense. That is the only type of payback they understand: our votes. They should not come as cheaply or carelessly as they have in the past. They have cost us too much already.

[And nowhere worse than in California. MUST READ > ]

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