Steven Greenhut: Public Employee Unions Are Sinking California - WSJ.com: "...To do that California needs to take on its public employee unions.
Approximately 85% of the state's 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, 'This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs.' There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.
Many of these retirees are former police officers, firefighters, and prison guards who can retire at age 50 with a pension that equals 90% of their final year's pay. The pensions for these (and all other retirees) increase each year with inflation and are guaranteed by taxpayers forever—regardless of what happens in the economy or whether the state's pensions funds have been fully funded (which they haven't been)..."
Ah, yes, how the power-brokers long for those halcyon days of no-bank bailouts, no corporate welfare, well, er,uh, not so much. Revised sentence: "Ah, yes, how the power-brokers long those halycon days of slavery." Gee, I wonder why the California public employees don't just do the right thing and work for nothing? Then they'd be just like all the public employees in the South and other non-union duchies-- subject to political whim and denied a fair wage while they watch the various societal parasites rake in billions of unearned wealth.
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