We Don’t Need No Education - NYTimes.com
...In the remarks Mr. Romney later tried to deny, he derided President Obama: “He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers.” Then he declared, “It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”
You can see why I was ready to give points for honesty. For once, he actually admitted what he and his allies mean when they talk about shrinking government. Conservatives love to pretend that there are vast armies of government bureaucrats doing who knows what; in reality, a majority of government workers are employed providing either education (teachers) or public protection (police officers and firefighters)...
2 comments:
The problem with cutting useful city jobs is that it just creates a bigger pension hole since there are fewer workers paying into the pension fund.
The key is to get everybody to agree that pensions can't go above a certain percentage of the entire city or state budget.
Then, give property tax breaks to anybody who has to take a cut in their pension fund. Pension salaries are very hush hush. Do any of us know what a police pension pays a police officer?
Is it 30,000 a year, is it 50,000 a year, is it way more? Most of us don't know, and that is what I find so troubling that so many people have a final position without knowing what the pension payout is.
And the pension payout can vary greatly from state to state.
Pension funds are quite opaque; I've always been a proponent of making both salary and pension a percentage of average per capita income and indexed so they slide both up and down. I'm also in favor of no pensions for politicians, and no naming of public structures after people until they have been dead 100 years.
Post a Comment