Lawrence J. McQuillan | Tuesday August 4, 2020 at 6:30 PM PDT
How do you rake in more money after retirement than when you worked? One way is to become a California police officer, sheriff, or sheriff’s deputy. As I reported in my book on government-employee pension systems, California Dreaming: Lessons on How to Resolve America’s Public Pension Crisis, former San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong...
Read More »
Craig Eyermann | Monday June 15, 2020 at 10:47 AM PDT
The pensions of public employees, the people who work for state or local governments, are in trouble. After years of promises by politicians—who, like public employees themselves, have done little to provide funds to pay for the generous retirement benefits—many public employee pension funds are now at increased risk of insolvency as the economy...
Read More »
Craig Eyermann | Monday October 21, 2019 at 9:49 AM PDT
Across the United States, a large number of public employee pension funds face the serious risk of running into insolvency because politicians have promised millions of state and local bureaucrats far more generous retirement benefits than they are capable of paying. Many of these politicians are more than willing to negotiate incredibly favorable contracts...
Read More »
Craig Eyermann | Tuesday October 8, 2019 at 1:33 PM PDT
Like Illinois, New Jersey’s worsening public employee pension situation is not tenable.
K. Lloyd Billingsley | Tuesday June 11, 2019 at 9:05 AM PDT
After the EPA-CIA-Vietnam fake John Beale’s case, bogus bonuses still abound in the federal government.
Craig Eyermann | Monday October 29, 2018 at 12:10 PM PDT
State gov.s omit pension obligations to hide insolvency.
Craig Eyermann | Friday June 22, 2018 at 12:00 PM PDT
Without fiscal reform, cuts to basic education programs are imminent.
Lawrence J. McQuillan | Tuesday October 20, 2015 at 3:16 PM PDT
Milton Friedman, the 1976 Nobel Laureate in economics, was interviewed on the television program Uncommon Knowledge in 1999, and he offered a solution to Social Security’s financial problems: shut it down. But Friedman didn’t advocate that the federal government walk away from its promises. Social Security participants are owed a stream of payments during...
Read More »
Lawrence J. McQuillan | Thursday October 8, 2015 at 5:57 PM PDT
The actuarial firm Cheiron recently projected the future yearly pension costs for San Jose’s police and firefighter pension plan. Cheiron wrote: In the worst scenarios, the City’s aggregate contribution rate can exceed 110 percent of payroll. In the best scenarios, the City’s Tier 1 rate can drop to 0 percent, leaving a relatively small...
Read More »
Lawrence J. McQuillan | Friday September 25, 2015 at 11:17 AM PDT
Four U.S. cities went belly up recently, and all declared bankruptcy largely due to unaffordable government pension costs. The outcomes of these bankruptcies should make everyone think twice about lending money to cities with serious public pension debts. The graphic below shows the outcome of the municipal bankruptcies in Vallejo, Detroit, Stockton, and San...
Read More »
