by Ron DeLord | Jan 24, 2016 | Collective Bargaining, Fire, Labor, Pensions, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
How’s your 401(k) doing? If you have stocks in it, not well. How are government pensioners doing? Fabulously well, some of them. A database of pensions maintained by the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscal watchdog in Albany, shows firefighters retiring on up to...
by Ron DeLord | Sep 14, 2015 | Collective Bargaining, Fire, Labor, Pensions, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
The Wall Street Journal reports that public employee pension plans are getting more realistic about the returns they assume for their investments. But, as I show in a new report released by the American Enterprise Institute, they’re not being nearly realistic enough....
by Ron DeLord | Sep 8, 2015 | Collective Bargaining, Fire, Labor, Pensions, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
This country has made a lot of terrible financial blunders. Easily among the top ten would be the decision to allow public employees to form unions and engage in collective bargaining. Only a little more than 50 years old, that mistake has done prodigious harm to us...
by rondelord | Aug 27, 2015 | Collective Bargaining, Fire, Labor, Pensions, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
It’s well-known that there’s a huge financial hole in state-sponsored retirement plans for public employees, a hole that states will eventually have to fill with tax increases and spending cuts. There is, however, still considerable debate as to the size of this...
by rondelord | Jun 8, 2015 | Collective Bargaining, Fire, Labor, Pensions, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
A recent study pegged the debt of state and local government pension plans at $4.7 trillion. If politicians and voters fail to adopt reforms, younger people will be stuck paying off a massive and growing debt they did not create or approve. State and local government...