Those retirees are only viable and important so long as they can still vote.
In the case of the state and local pension plans, they don’t qualify as a Black Swan, since the probability of a major bust is predictable, not a surprise.
But it certainly is a disaster waiting to happen.
The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.
The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
1.The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
2.The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
3.The psychological biases that blind people, individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event’s massive role in historical affairs.
You have your eyes and ears shut, or
You are a politician, or
You are a Liberal
All they need is a bigger can and a longer road.
chicago... america’s next detroit
this is what ‘progressives’ push for... to burden the system to the point of failure.
‘progressives’ are american commies spun up by cold war russian agents in our university system
From a free market perspective, pensions nothing more than deferred compensation. An employee agrees to contract with an employer for labor at a price which includes current compensation (wages, medical insurance, etc) and deferred compensation (future pension benefits). If the employee in good faith provides the labor, the current and future compensation is owed by the employer today and in the future.
Cutting pensions of employees who have provided the labor they were contracted to provide is nothing more breach of contract and outright theft. Whether or not the employer (public or private) overpaid for the services of the employee is not an issue. The labor was provided and the compensation is owed.
Employers (municipalities, states, and private corporations) have successfully lobbied Congress for decades to loosen up pension funding rules on the books as well as block legislation which would require employers to fully fund pension plans. To blame greedy employees (government or private) for unfunded pension plans is disingenuous. It is employers, aided and abetted by Congressmen owned by K Street, who have deliberately underfunded private and public pensions in this country for decades.
In 2012 Congress buried in a highway bill a provision allowing corporations to reduce payments into private pension plans. In 2014 Congress passed a bill for the first time allowing pension plans to cut earned benefits. Essentially Congress approved the theft of labor. Instead of loosening funding requirements, Congress should have passed legislation protecting pensions by requiring all employers, public and private, to fully fund pension obligations within five years and to maintain full funding thereafter.
A person who truly believes in free market principles should stand with the employees on the issue of pensions. To allow any employer to walk away from pension obligations is to condone outright theft. Reducing pension benefits is no different than the state allowing a person to walk into a store, take an item to the cash register, hand the cashier partial payment, and walking out the door with no fear of prosecution. Whether or not the price charged by the store was fair or not, to render only partial payment is theft.
It is very possible some public or private pensions are overly generous. One could also argue a firm in bankruptcy paying its CEO a large bonus or severance payment is also excessive. It matters not. If are to be a nation built on respect for rule of law, we must enforce fulfillment of contracts no matter if the contracts are perceive to be good or bad. When we either condone theft or we don’t.
Sue the Democrat Party for the money.
They caused this and they have LOTS of money.
I'd suggest there's also a Reason (3) at work here: Most people ignore the pension problem because they know governments will eventually screw the pensioners if necessary.
“Underfunded pension plans, to the extent they come up at all, tend to be mentioned in passing largely because most of them are 1) too small to matter on their own and 2) too hard to understand for most people to form a strong opinion.”
And this means most of them are STUPID as bricks or in denial and don’t want to understand. They signed up for something too good to be true and it isn’t and now they expect someone... a tax payer... to bail them out.
What’s the problem Chicago? Just raise taxes. Be like Kaliporniastan.
Chicago - thug city...
“Why Pensions Are A (Big) Black Swan”
That’s racist!
Coming soon to a Democrat-run metropolis near you!