Buckle Your Chin Strap! The Wave Has Started!
Did you see on the news last night that the special auditor brought in by the stae to review Harrisburg City finances let the new Mayor know that the city is on the bink of bankruptcy!
And did you see that Chambersburg School distric tis asking for a 5.5% increase in the school taxes?
BOTH are in trouble for the same reason---pensions and unrealistic retirement plans that were negotiated by the teachers and government workers.
The Pennsylvania Retirement "Fund" can't make the payments.
Money was lost in the dot com bubble----BUT the state made the rest of us put extra money back in to make them whole. THEN 9/11 and the most recent stock moarket implosions. So there is NOT enought money to fund their retirement plans!
WELCOME to the real world teachers and government workers! Most of us don't have a pension or retirement plan or even a solid 401k.
The plans the unions negotiated WERE RIDICULOUS! A full vested teacher in some districts RETIRES AT 100% of their final years salary FOR LIFE PLUS HEALTHCARE!
I know some are reiteing at salries of $80,000 after 30 years service! That is LUDICROUS! Thnk about it----let's be EXTRAVAGENT ad say the EVERY year ofr the last 30 that $10,000 was put in the retirement fund for the worker---now remember in 1970 the average teacher salary was under $10,000 and in 1990 it was under $40,000. So let's say the District and the teacher have put $300,000 into their account and that THEN it has doubled to $600,000. OKAY? still with me? So the interest rate now is les say 5% so the income off the capital would be what $30,000 a year at BEST? Where is the $50,000 PLUS health care money coming form that we are "short"?
Would a pension for twenty or thirty thousand a year PLUS their Social Security been more realistic? Of course.
Call your Congressman and State Legislators and the Governor and tell them we need to get the State Supreme Court to allow that "collective bargaining agreeemnts" can be reopened and the pensions and benefits reduced to real world levels. Otherwise folks as a state and a nation we will all go bankrupt. The government cannot keep placing the burden on the real workes who do not have healthcare, pensions, etc. of anywhere NEAR The magnitude they all do.
It's time for the "next reveolution" to take our country BACK from a governement and its drunkien fiscal polices and spending.
As always, IMHO.