PENSION BONDS issued by the city to cover current obligations to municipal retirement systems are "the purest form of intergenerational theft."
So says Bill King in "Our kids will inherit pension-bond debt," Houston Chronicle, January 24, 2010.
How could Houston, a common-sense city, do such a boneheaded thing?
Because even here, the governing class takes care of its own, unionized city workers who always, always, always turn out to vote.
We don't overpay our city workers, but we definitely over-pension them, primarily through schemes that allow retirement as early as the late thirties or early forties for many workers -- benefits available to almost no workers in the market economy.
As pension costs haved snowballed, city leaders -- read Bill White -- have elected to borrow pension contributions rather than to scale back their ambitions to spend on popular projects.
This is how Clever People solve problems -- by borrowing money from our children and grandchildren.
Ordinary People pay their own bills.
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Kudoes to the Chronicle for running Mr. King's essay.
THE ABSURD layout at the end of this post is 100 percent attributable to Typepad's pathetic text editor. Once you make a mistake, you cannot unmake it. And every attempt to fix the problem compounds it.
Sorry.
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