Did you know the federal government has over $3.5 TRILLION in pension debt? If you add in the deficits of state and local governments across the country, the total amounts to about $7 TRILLION. According to Moody’s, that’s about 40 percent of our Gross Domestic Product.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the broadest quantitative measure of a nation’s total economic activity. More specifically, GDP represents the monetary value of all goods and services produced within a nation’s geographic borders over a specified period of time.”
Read that a couple of times and your scalp will crawl – we are spending 40 percent of our income on pensions.
Think of that as you work away at your private sector job – you’re feathering somebody else’s nest, but who is feathering yours? Get ready for a hard, cold nest folks.
I don’t know what you think of Donald Trump, but his budget plan has got my attention. Especially this proposal:
- An increase in employee contributions by 1 percent each year for the next six years (until they equal the government’s contribution),
- An elimination of the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for current and future Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS) participants and cutting the COLA by 0.5 percent for Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) participants of what the typical formula currently allows,
- Basing future retirement benefits on the average of an employee’s highest five years of salary, and,
- Eliminate supplemental payments to employees who retire before age 62.
Nobody in the media is talking about the pensions – why? They want us to fixate on their claim that this plan will raise taxes on the middle class. Well, ask yourself this – are you middle class? Look at your paycheck – are you making more than $10,000 a month? Because that’s the middle class these days folks, the public workers. Trump is asking them to pay more income taxes – that’s good for the rest of us who live on an average of $40,000/year.
No, I don’t like Trump, but I like his tax plan.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
Now if only the state would do much the same thing.
Good idea – California has over $206 BILLION pension deficit. Here’s an article from last January from former gubernatorial candidate and finance man Steve Westly – he calls it our “elephant in the room”.
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/07/30/steve-westly-california-pensions-are-its-206-billion-elephant-in-the-room/
Oh no! The elephant is about to take a crap!
Utilities cutting rates, cite benefits of Trump tax reform.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/utilities-cutting-rates-cite-benefits-of-trump-tax-reform/article/2645375
Not here in Cal we get rate hike, while PG&E gets tax cuts.
Thanks, very interesting. I wonder if we’ll hear about this in local media – I’ll keep an eye on the Sac Bee and the Sac tv news.