Empty your pension accounts – Detroit bankruptcy provokes calls for nationwide assault on pensions by the parasites
by Wolf
12160.info
August 12, 2013
Government representatives of a number of major American cities have seized on Detroit’s bankruptcy filing last month to raise calls for an intensified attack on public worker pensions and benefits. The wave of comments have come in the weeks following Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s announcement that he will seek to cut the pensions of Detroit city workers and retirees.
The most aggressive statements were made by billionaire New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said in a speech Tuesday that Detroit is “the road to ruin for any American city. I believe that the Detroit experience holds lessons for every American city—and that we have an obligation to protect our future by examining those lessons.”
Bloomberg then laid the blame for the Detroit bankruptcy at the feet of workers and retirees:
“One of the major reasons that Detroit could not stop its downward spiral was that its labor costs—especially its retiree costs for pensions and health care—crowded out its ability to invest in the things that make a city an attractive place to live and visit.”
Bloomberg’s speech culminated in a blunt threat to workers and retirees in America’s most populated city. “We are only a short distance from relapsing into decline if we allow health care and pension benefits to crowd out the investments that make New York City a place where people want to live, work, study, and visit,” he said.
Bloomberg’s comments were echoed by the mayor of Chicago, the third most populated city in the US. Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat who served as chief of staff to President Obama from 2009 to 2010, told the New York Times on August 5 that “this is kind of the dark cloud that’s coming ever closer,” and that “what the system needs is a hard, cold dose of honesty.”
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