Welcome To The Third World, Part 21: This Pension Thing Is About To Get Real
By: John Rubino
GoldSeek.com
Monday, 16 January 2017
“The problem with police officers and firefighters isn’t a public-sector problem; it isn’t a problem with government; it’s a problem with the entire society. It’s what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It’s a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences. It’s not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. They’d been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences.”
― Michael Lewis, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
Though it may not be instantly clear, in the above quote Michael Lewis is talking about public sector pensions and how over the course of several decades, mayors and governors across the US have colluded with police, firefighter and teachers unions to promise outrageously-generous benefits and then failed to put aside enough money to pay for them.
As a consequence two things are happening. In dozens if not hundreds of cities and towns, services are being cut to the bone to pay for ballooning pension benefits, and – when even these cuts prove inadequate – pensions are being drastically reduced.
Which in turn means two other things. First, life isn’t nearly as easy or pleasant as it used to be in a lot of places, as library hours are cut, trash piles up and police response times lengthen. And second, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers who expected to retire comfortably are staring at major lifestyle shrinkage.
To which a reasonable person might yawn and say, sure the numbers look grim. But they’ve looked that way for a long time and outside of Chicago, American life is still pretty good by Greek, Venezuelan or Russian standards. So go away until something tangible actually happens.
Point taken. But this might be that time. Beginning with Dallas, where the city is actually taking money back from plan recipients…
Dallas Police and Fire pension members may have to pay back funds
The city has agreed to put in an additional billion dollars over 30 years, but they’re proposing a series of bitter pills to make up the rest of the nearly $4 billion shortfall.
The bitterest pill: A proposal to take back all of the interest police and firefighters earned on Deferred Option Retirement accounts, or DROP. That would amount to an additional billion dollars saved. The city is calling it an “equity adjustment.” Retirees call it an illegal “claw back.”
The city is also seeking to “equity adjustment” on cost of living increases. The city says that pension checks are about 20 percent higher than they would have been if increases had been tied to inflation.
The city’s proposing to freeze cost of living increases until it catches up to the inflation index.
The Rest…HERE
