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[QUOTE=FF2®;4470978]So here's the million dollar question.
Is the public willing to raise the salaries when they drop the benefits?[/QUOTE]
Here is my POV. The thing we need in clarity of cost. No more no less. I am happy to increase salaries if that is called for as long as we take the mystery out of the cost. There is no way to calculate the cost of promising a worker a defined benefit at retirement. Politicians that offer these packages are government workers themselves and they know they will be long gone before the real costs kick in. The system is flawed. It doesn't work at all.
My small county of Rockland in Ny will need to fork up 60 Million this year to make up for a shortfall in our pension system. For reference the entire county budget is around 180 Million a year. We have some of the highest property taxes in the country already. So now we will borrow 60million to make up this years shortfall. What are we supposed to do next year or the following when the shortfall hits again? Borrow more.
The solution? No more mystery. Employees get a predetermined dollar amount and a defined contribution retirement package. Politicians are now forced to account for salaries and benefits in the year they are paid. No more debt bombs. Workers can choose to invest their retirement contribution in a 401K type plan or hand it over to their Unions which can administer their defined benefit plans as they see fit. I'd personally choose the 401K because I can promise you the unions will blow the pension money even faster then the municipalities did.
Would you be on board with this type of system FF?
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