Posted on 12/02/2013 2:12:53 AM PST by Libloather
**SNIP**
If legislators don't take a big step to unravel this crisis — an unfunded pension obligation of $100 billion that grows by millions every day — then the state that also boasts the nation's lowest credit rating, and one of the nation's worst jobless rates, will suffer even more. As will its citizens, many of whom wish pensions didn't devour more than one-fifth of the state's operating budget — money that could help educate children, care for the sick and meet other needs.
It isn't just the pension crisis that should animate legislators' decisions this week — and that should rivet every voter's attention. With or without pension reforms, state government and many local governments (that's you, Chicago and many of its pension-strangled suburbs) face dreadful financial prospects: higher taxation, fleeing employers and yet more unemployed citizens.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Your description of downstate Illinois sounds like upstate NY, which for years was conservative, yet all the money and power was/is in the cities, especially New York.
Who in Illinois was/is responsible for overseeing the pension system was properly funded over all the years in order to pay the promised future benefits? What is the official explanation why it wasn’t?
http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2011/07/08/public-versus-private-sector-job-gains
private jobs got Hammered in the first 2 years of the recession, and public employment was almost untouched. The subsequent corrections don’t even come close to balancing it out. ESPECIALLY because almost all the job growth in private sector has been low paying service industry type jobs and lots of part time employment.
Bottom line, the taxpayers can’t support the public employee gravy train anymore.
“ESPECIALLY because almost all the job growth in private sector has been low paying service industry type jobs and lots of part time employment.”
You think that only the private sector has low paying service jobs and lots of part time employment? Think again. I retired from a public University job. Many professors being hired in the last 10 years have been adjunct professors (part-time, no pension benefits) rather than full-time ones. As to low paying, most worker bees in the gov’t agencies of the state are low paying. Only the high up administrators get all the gravy. Again you are being myopic.
I was referring to the public sector. I don’t care what private business od with the money they earn.
Think about this.
In NY State, in the suburbs of NYC on Long Island, nearly 100% of the Long Island Rail Road workers padded their pensions through an elaborate scheme that would have cost NY taxpayers over $1Billion in padded costs over the lives of the scammers. And that was for under 1000 scammers in the scheme.
http://overlawyered.com/2011/10/l-i-r-r-disability-scandal/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/opinion/sunday/payback-on-the-lirr.html?_r=0
The situation in Chicago is even WORSE than Long Island.
I think Illinois needs to be sued by every other state for offering up odumbo as their senator in the first place. We are all paying a dear price for the POS now in the White House and Illinois is directly to blame.
“The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”
— Margaret Thatcher
What are they GRIPING about? Doesn’t Illinois now force the residents to celebrate sodomy? That should’ve solved everything.
Oh, wait...
Cal, Ill, and NY are the key to Democrat electoral success.
With 107 electoral votes locked and no need to spend money there, the campaign is pretty easy.
That’s why you’ll see federally guaranteed state debt for them.
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