the war between tax donkeys and public pensioners

[link to www.lewrockwell.com (secure)]



Interesting article about where it's all going.


It’s a long article but the summary is brief: corrupt politicos promised the moon to public employees, and now the fiscal chickens of insolvency are coming home to roost.

Public pension obligations are rising so fast that even repeated tax increases can’t keep up.

This is setting up a second front in the war between entitled Baby Boomers and younger taxpayers who pay most of the federal and local taxes. Public pensioners are a subset of the entitled Baby Boomers, but their pensions can’t be paid with borrowed money like Social Security and Medicare; public pension obligations come out of local and state taxes, and as those obligations soar then public services must be slashed and taxes jacked up by annual double-digit increases.


So there is a war brewing between public pensioners and the Tax Donkeys: the Unprotected who pay local property taxes on their homes, state and local taxes on their incomes, sales taxes on their purchases, junk fees on local government services, and so on.

Corrupt politicos created the war by over-promising benefits to public employees and ignoring fiscal realities. By the time the bill comes due, the politicos who rubber-stamped the unaffordable promises are themselves gorging at the public-pension retiree trough.

Not every public employee is receiving gold-plated pensions and benefits, of course, but that doesn’t negate the reality that nationally, public pensions are increasing faster than government revenues and the returns earned by the pension programs.