NEWJERSEY: The pension mess

Saturday, December 25, 2010

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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JOBSEARCH: Demographic shift and the implications of it

Sunday, July 18, 2010

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The federal government says that 40 percent of all U.S. workers will be 55 or older by the end of the year 2010. Your workforce is part of this demographic shift. What issues with the aging workforce do you and others face, and how will you deal with them?

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Just as the ERISA diktat changed the pension ripoff scam of the aircraft companies, there has to be a significant change in age discrimination law. We can have workers idle from 50 to 65. As the politicians and bureaucrats raise the Social Security retirement age, it’ll worsen the problem. The problem originates in the whole concept of benefits. Like most diktats, it distorts the marketplace. What has to happen is that people buy their own benefits. Employers have benefited form this scam for too long. And, workers over value their benefit packages. It creates a society of serfs who are afraid to change jobs. The new plantation. We need to become a nation of consultants. And the tax diktats have to change to match the new realities. Pensions, social security, and such have to be “personal”.

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NEWJERSEY: Public Pension have bigger problems

Saturday, January 2, 2010

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091228/D9CSJBM80.html

NJ lawmaker proposes public pension reform
Dec 28, 5:49 PM (ET)
By ANGELA DELLI SANTI

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TRENTON, N.J. (AP) – A New Jersey lawmaker is planning to introduce legislation that would bar nongovernment workers from enrolling in the state’s taxpayer-funded pension system.

Assemblyman Paul Moriarty’s bill would restrict eligibility to the Public Employees Retirement System by keeping lobbyists and others out.

Currently, employees of some 17 private groups are eligible for state pensions.

“Why should the taxpayers pay even $1 to someone who is not a state employee, but a lobbyist who is trying to get special favors,” asked Moriarty, D-Turnersville.

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Why do we have such “public pension funds”?

Private industry has gone to 401ks for “pensions”.

The “State” hasn’t made a contribution to the pension fund in a dog’s age. Surely that’s a bigger problem then a few bottom feeders pigging out at the trough.

Perhaps it’s time to “reform” the whole problem.

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