Zardnaar
Legend
You kind of expect California, Seattle, NYC to be crazy though with house prices.
D&D and the rising pandemic
- Thread starter GreyLord
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You kind of expect California, Seattle, NYC to be crazy though with house prices.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
It has become MUCH crazier in the past few years.
Zardnaar
Legend
Yeah here everyone's like NZ sucks it's so expensive yada yada.
They don't believe you same thing is happening in US, UK, Aussie etc.
Wages higher perhaps (that's debatable depending). IDK if you could relocate to a state capital for example in Idaho/Iowa/Kentucky or whatever and get a decent job.
Of course, those public employees aren't exactly pulling in the big bucks while they are working. That pension is part of their compensation they depend on, just like others depend on their private sector retirement funds.
That's... pretty much what I said, laying out what "demand" we are talking about here - the value of a home. I mean, I hope nobody here has had to but... imagine having to go a year or more without a home. That's the value we are talking about, and thus the demand.
Imagine the demand if people who could somehow always afford $1400 to rent an apartment were able to get a loan for a house that was 500 sq.ft. bigger than their apartment but costs $200 less a month (even including taxes and insurance) -- instead of being told they need to save 20% first while trying to pay off student loans and the like.
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Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
We can't afford it. The current pension liability is somewhere around 80k for every taxpayer in the state. They should invest in 401k like everyone else.
Yeah. It would be nice if California could stop getting in its own way and allow enough housing to be build.
Is part of that the accounting change a few years (decade now?) ago that required the pension funds to have more put aside?
In any case, the pensions and promises of COLAs is part of what had justified the low salaries for state employees in places like Illinois. There, it feels like a big part of it it wasn't the promised pensions that were the problem (although the COLA promise seems inane), it was that the state (in the form of generations of elected officials as chosen by generations of voters voters) that went for tax cut after tax cut instead of paying for things.
It feels like a lot of corporations did something similar - didn't almost all of them formerly have pensions? They escaped in many cases by arranging bankruptcy restructurings that lined the executives pockets but nuked the pension funds.
In any case the states have already promised the pensions to those who worked for the state for them instead of higher salaries. If the citizens of the state can't pay what they owe through tax dollars, then why should these workers be the only ones to suffer while the others who didn't work for the state and got paid more get to keep all of their 401ks?
For future employees? Sure, a 401k or 403b with matching funds equivalent to whatever the state originally was going to put towards the pension seems fair. Instead the matching funds are less to help bail out the pension funds, so that the new employees get less later on to make sure the already or near retired get the full thing.
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Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
It's either not sufficient by a long shot or the money is being taken by the legislature for other things.
California has 340k+ employees making 100k+ a year. And many in the 200k+, 300k+ and even 400k+ ranges. We give high salaries AND pensions.
We had a candidate for governor in IL once who ran on needing a tax increase to pay for all the things the voters wanted (like, well, schools). Of course they got slaughtered by the candidate who promised no tax increases. Of course, a while in, they had to raise taxes.
One of my biggest pet peeves are folks who want a tax cut or tax increase who can't say specifically what they want to cut out of the budget or fund new. Here we went years hearing "there has to be room for an across the board 4% cut"... with no regard to how many previous years that was said or to the population growing or, well, anything related to reality.
I'm sure some are being overpaid. What are those making 100k+ doing? Experienced state college professors in a variety of fields in some states make less than some of their fresh Ph.D. students do starting in their first jobs (and some of those private colleges give some great free tuition perks for the kids that many public schools don't). What are the lawyers the state needs making compared to what lawyers of similar experience make in the private sector? The doctors? Those overseeing agencies of 1,000s of employees with 9 figure budgets? (I won't ask about the high school and college football and basketball coaches). What should a teacher with a masters and 20 years experience in an expensive area make? If the state needs workers in a building in an expensive area, how much does it cost for the worker to even live within a reasonable commute? [Edit: Wow 340k employees is a big number!]
(Here for a long time there was a ruckus every year about how many state employees made $50k or more. $50k!?!? Wtf should folks with advanced degrees and years of experience and managerial responsibility make.)
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