Public school teacher pensions are a ticking time bomb. They’re short by $933 billion in assets needed to cover promises to retirees, or more than $18,600 per public school pupil.
Public school teacher pensions are a ticking time bomb. They’re short by $933 billion in assets needed to cover promises to retirees, or more than $18,600 per public school pupil.
Vermont, welcome to California!
Corporate pensions, public pensions, Social Security, 401(k)s tied to a poorly performing market… What else can we add to the list of forlorn hope? Perhaps we should end the concept of retirement.
Branford, were it only those two states…
and to Blue’s point: http://missionaryroad.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/is-retirement-in-the-bible-think-again/
Vermont passed a law <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_60_(Vermont_law)> that was ‘initiated’ and ‘forced’ on the state by a Vermont Supreme Court decision and not by a popular desire coming from the voting population.
The ‘outsiders’ who had been moving into Vermont since the 1970s organized a block of voters to ‘approve’ of Acts 60 while the native-born and naturally ‘hands-off’ libertarian-Republican population of the state did their ‘thing.’ That is, they stayed home and didn’t organize and didn’t ‘turn out’ when it was time to vote on this issue.
The net effect of the ‘centrally-controlled’ state-wide system of property assessment in Vermont has been to deplete the township in which I live of the money that it badly needs to repair its roads, build bridges, buy highway equipment, pay its hard-working highway crew an adequate wage and to rebuild and improve its historic town office building.
The state-wide system mandates how much property tax money must be collected by the town. This amount exceeds what is required to educate our children. The taxes collected in excess of that amount must be sent by the town to the state government where it is distributed to other towns to support their educational needs or to support other things related to education.
The net result of this law is that our town has almost completely lost control of its educational affairs and has totally lost control of its property tax tax-base.