Posted on 10/05/2021 8:36:24 AM PDT by george76
At the end of the fiscal year 2020, 39 states did not have enough money to pay all of their bills.
....
Total debt among the 50 states amounted to $1.5 trillion at the end of the fiscal year 2020
...
Retirement plans, such as pension and retiree health care benefits .. account for the majority of state debt ... on average, the 50 states had only set aside 64 cents to fund pension promises and 8 cents to fund retiree health care promises
....
When states cannot make up investment shortfalls, then taxpayers have to make up the difference.
...
Connecticut replaced New Jersey to be the state in the worst fiscal health and with the highest per resident tax burden, $62,500. Connecticut only had $16.8 billion, or 17% of the necessary funds to pay $96.3 billion worth of bills. Connecticut catapulted to last place due to pension plan liabilities which rose faster than investment income.
...
accounting tricks include..
• Inflating revenue assumptions.
• Counting borrowed money as income.
• Understating the true costs of government.
• Delaying the payment of current bills until the start of the next fiscal year so they aren’t included in the budget calculations.
...
the most common accounting trick states use is hiding a large portion of employee compensation from the budgeting process.” Employee compensation packages include healthcare, life insurance, and pensions .. unfortunately, some elected officials have used portions of the money that is owed to pension and OPEB funds to keep taxes low and pay for politically popular programs. This is similar to charging earned benefits to a credit card without having the money to pay off the debt. Instead of funding promised benefits now, they have been charged to future taxpayers.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Tax the rich. Tax the poor. Tax the working class. Require vaccinations and tax the vaccine. Tax firearms. Tax firearm ownership. Tax homeowners. Legalize prostitution and tax it. Tax childbirth. Tax abortion. Tax people for their credit card debt...
More specifically, the very corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratified federal government steals state revenues by means of unconstitutional federal taxes, taxes that Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
In fact, you can bet that if a given federal domestic spending program is not reasonably related to the U.S. Postal Service, then the program is unconstitutional, and win your bet probably most of the time imo.
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"
"10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Insights welcome.
The ultimate remedy for unconstitutionally big, alleged election-stealing, Democratic Party-pirated federal and state governments oppressing everybody under their boots...
Consider that all the states can effectively “secede” from the unconstitutionally big federal government by doing the following.
Patriots need to primary federal and state elected officials who don't send voters email ASAP that clearly promises to do the following.
Federal and state lawmakers need to promise in their emails to introduce resolutions no later than 100 days after start of new legislative sessions that proposes an amendment to the Constitution to the states, the amendment limited to repealing the 16th and ill-conceived 17th Amendments.
Again, insights welcome.
Can congress cap off an annual retirement rate?
I don’t know about this article. I see that California is not in the top five sunshine states. But the voters of the state seem to think the sun shines out the governor’s a**.
The US Federal Government dictates how money is spent, and what debt is issued.
Reassuring to see Illinois in the list. Home of the 250K a year retired toll booth collector!
There’s lots of money associated with older people, more so the older we get, both in care and maintenance costs and in also stored wealth.
The cost-saving, money-money making ability to thin the herd with globally mandated, pharma-induced ‘herd immunity’ probably seems like a really good idea(!) to those who must now pay for yesterday’s promises of golden retirements and low co-pay ‘free healthcare’ forever.
Things like Cuomo’s nursing home covid care plan, banning effective off-use drugs like hydroxycloroquine and Ivermectin and, of course, mandating the various vaxx shots and whatever they do to the immune system would greatly help with those costs!
Do they think that way? Sometimes it sure seems like it.
These states promised money that they had no ability to pay. Voters deserve what they voted for. There is no solution for covering the shortfall. Let them stew in their own juices.
A: Get rid of pensions. Honor the ones we already agreed to, but not new employees. Maybe offer current employees to get off their future pensions by not forcing them to put into it from their paychecks.
B: Even if we lose that argument (we will), allow pensions to be better invested. Right now all pensions have to abide by regulations of the PGBC (think of it as the FDIC for pensions) and part of those regulations is that only I think about 50% of all money for current retirees or soon to be retirees can be invested in equities (or the pensions premiums for the PGBC insurance goes up). If you have a specific withdrawal rate for investments (i.e. 3% per year or 4% per year) then around 25% in safe funds (i.e. bonds, money markets, treasuries) are needed even for the major stock market downturns of my lifetime. That's because they recover their losses in a few years. I.e. 4% per year for 6 years will be a 24% withdrawal -- having only 25% in safe funds allows you 6 years of withdrawing for normal living without pulling from equities while they're down. Thus, the PGBC insurance is making it tough for pensions to stay solvent by not allowing pensions to make more money to keep up with demand.
The whole ‘printing money scam’ is a way to steal from people who buy our debt... using inflation. Lots of people we steal from are foreigners - but a hefty amount are American citizens... often living on fixed incomes.
Eventually people will figure it out.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4000846/posts
Remember that 'Emergency Funding' the States Needed Last March? Here's What Happened to It
"...nearly 7 months after Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, precious little of that $350 billion for state and local governments has been spent.
Every time we roll our eyes or cringe over preposterous wastes of money for the thoughts we hate (trans people in crisis, BLM, entitlements for illegals including terrorists, studies of feelings about things that trigger people in college) then don't spend on them.
We just let the pols get away with it and live on gated estates in huge mansions. That has to end. Pols get re-elected by dumb people who say "Uh, I heard of that one on a TV interview but I never heard of the other one so I'll re-elect Jerry Nadler."
Federal government employment-related retirement plans aside, the states have never given Congress the express power to make INTRAstate retirement rate-related laws imo.
More specifically, there's no clause in Congress's constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers that reasonably addresses retirement rates or other social issues imo, so retirement rates are automatically and uniquely a 10th Amendment (10A)-protected state power issue.
"10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
In fact, in case you haven't seen this before, the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had clarified that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had left the care of the people to the states, not the feds.
”Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government [emphases added]. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.” —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
Also consider that Justice Louis Brandeis had reflected on 10A state powers when he introduced his "laboratories of democracy" metaphor, a given state's social spending programs ultimately depending on what the legal majority voters of a given state want.
"[...] a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." —Justice Louis Brandeis, Laboratories of Democracy.
So if you've studied state retirement plans and are convinced that another state has a better retirement plan for your needs, then move to that state.
In the meanwhile, we need to get the corrupt federal government out of the affairs of the sovereign states.
agree fully
thanks
Neither do I!
This is what the Build Better Back plan is really all about.
The whole thing is a house of cards.
California is running TV ads in the Reno market since the moritorium on rent has been lifted:
Look up HOUSINGISKEY.COM
Calif wants you to apply for ALL your unpaid rent/mortgage & unpaid utilities-—
And they say to make sure you inform your LANDLORD that you have applied for such funds...........
HOW MANY WAYS CAN CALIFORNIA INSIST ON GOING BANKRUPT????
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.