Pension Lobbyists Were Right: It Won’t Cost a Dime
A must-read New York Times piece on public pensions has this bit about California:
It was 1999, and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or Calpers, the large government agency that manages retirement benefits for more than 1.6 million public workers, retirees and their families, was lobbying the legislature to increase employees’ benefits. Calpers’s plan would lower the retirement age for some workers to 50 years, even as it raised pensions to as much as 90 percent of their salaries.
Lobbyists were arguing that the plan — which would ultimately create the largest pension increase in the state’s history — wouldn’t cost “a dime of additional taxpayer money.”
…When Calpers’s plan to expand pensions came up in the state Legislature, lawmakers from both parties voted for it. On the Senate floor, it passed after 45 seconds of debate with no dissenting votes.
Then there is this from Reuters:
U.S. state and local governments will need to raise taxes by $1,398 per household every year for the next 30 years if they are to fully fund their pension systems, a study released on Wednesday said.
Waiting on the first person to compare this to the price of a “a hefty latte and muffin.”
