[supercat]

Until we get rid of the confiscatory public service employee pensions we will have confiscatory property taxes. We need to take all the teachers pension balances that we have already funded and convert them to 401K plans and then have the teachers contribute to their own pension plans just like the rest of us regular folks.

You've just hit upon a major problem: handling retirement funds on a cash-flow rather than an accrural basis. Unfortunately, there's not really any 'right' way to handle the situation: there are many people who took jobs at lower salaries than they would otherwise have demanded on the basis of promised retirement benefits. It is not really fair to such people to declare that they do not deserve the benefits for which they have already paid a substantial opportunity cost if not a direct cost.

The real problem is that if a politician reduces a teacher's salary by $1,000 in exchange for extra benefits whose present-cash-value is $1,500, the books will show that the politician has reduced the budget by $1,000--not that he's increased it by $500.

BTW, speaking of cash-flow versus accrural accounting, there's a certain other retirement program which is being run on a cash-flow basis and it's going to be a whole lot worse.

[tom paine 2]

I was talking to one of the local city council members yesterday about the Wisconsin teacher's pensions, and he said that it would be almost impossible to get the teachers out of the present retirement system because it would be a contract negotiation. The teachers would not accept that change and the contract would be handled by state arbitraters who would look at other communities practices and rule in favor of the teachers.
And as far as that other retirement program, I am planning as if it ain't gonna be there when I hang up my shoes for good.