NEWJERSEY: The pension mess

http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2010/12/tell-me-again-whos-at-fault-for-pension.html

Thursday, December 23, 2010
Tell me again who’s at fault for the pension mess

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The state treasurer announced today that the state pension shortfall is at an all-time high.

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>It’s the shock doctrine or disaster capitalism at its best.

Be nice if these two terms were defined? Or, perhaps, these are terms d’art of the Liberal media. You can’t seriously define what has been going on in the USA since say about WW2, (although some little L libertarians woud argue the “turning point” was 1913 with the income tax, the FED, and the Seventeenth!), as “capitalism”! Maybe “mercantilism”, “federal socialism”, or “empirical nationalism”?

> We have a huge Great Recession, the worst in more than 70 years

I’d call it a depression. But then I’m out of work. So I guess since you’re drawing a check, it’s only a recessions.

>what a great opportunity to kill off public sector unions and all
>their pensions and benefits. Private sector wages have been falling or
>stagnant for years, private sector benefits and pensions have been hallowed >out or become extinct.

But weren’t public sector pensions raised when private pensions were supposedly higher? So it’s logical, that, when private pensions become “cash basis defined contribution plans”, public pensions change as well.

(Note for those that don’t read my blog, I thought that CTW’s failure to make pension contributions or address the problem was terrible. “Pensions and benefits” are a FRAUD perpetrated on the working class. Without getting into yucky details, a business can pay $X for a certain unit of work. Now out of that $X, if the business “pays” $Y for “benefits”, then the worker gets X-Y. But, their “benefits” are tied to their job. So, let’s use life insurance as a concrete example. And, let’s keep it simple, life insurance costs either the company or the employee X$. Why don’t we just let the employee buy hi s or her own Damn insurance? Cause the Gooferment, the Company, the Politicians and Bureaucrats all have a vested interest in screwing the worker. And, everyone plays along with the fiction that some how this is “better”. Not better for the worker when he or she gets laid off, downsized, or whatever euphemism for fired you want to use.)

> race to the bottom in which American workers must compete with Chinese
> or Indian workers who earn a few dollars a day and have absolutely no
> protections or benefits.

So, instead of moaning and groaning, we have to learn to compete by moving up the value chain. We have to clear the road blocks to successful competition: taxes, regulation, education, paradigms / memes, and energy.

>Teachers and other public sector workers did not cause the Great Recession

Well, maybe they did. They have permitted the dumbing down of society. And, their union is absolutely out of control in the incestuous relationship with the professional politicians. Finally, as voters, they participated in a process that was designed and accomplished the destruction of the USA.

>they will be made to pay the price for the crimes of the
> Wall Street criminals.

As we all are!

> Katrina was the disaster

of Gooferment!

>

We have to separate the Gooferment from “Education”. If we are to have any hope of saving “the American Experiment”.

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