Note that all we are talking about here is reducing the rate at which the pensions of retired public employees will increase. This at a time when private sector employees are being laid off, seeing their salaries cut, and their investments have declined in value.
The injustice is obvious. Yet the retired or soon to be retired public employees have a point: the law of contract. They took their jobs and worked for years or decades in reliance on promises by taxpayers (in effect) to, among other things, fund lavish pensions. Forever. Public employees all across America will sue to force taxpayers to make good on those obligations. The result could be significant demographic shifts, as taxpayers flee jurisdictions that have massive liabilities to former government workers. The result, presumably, will be municipal, county and state bankruptcy.
I suspect that this is one of those fundamental societal divides that cannot be reconciled by applying conventional legal principles. My guess is that new legal doctrines will be developed to mediate between the legitimate but unrealistic claims of public retirees and the fiscal reality that the private sector is not rich enough to continue supporting those retirees in the style to which they are accustomed. But the struggle will not be an easy one. There will be many winners and losers along the way. For a decade or two to come, the division between public and private employees--in particular, retirees--will be one of the principal fault lines of our political life.
Wild ride.
And here's Roberta X on some of the "Fixes" the political class are coming up with.
Because the goobers at the wheel have decided that making the public sector even bigger is the solution to our economic woes.
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