Thursday, September 26, 2013

What can Nasvhille learn from Detroit's troubles?

In Detroit, where unions controlled the politicians, the politicians appointed union reps to administer the pensions:

Most of the trustees on Detroit’s two pension boards represent organized labor, and for years they could outvote anyone who challenged the payments.

They use this power to "redistribute" wealth from taxpayers to city workers, retired or not: 

Detroit’s municipal pension fund made payments for decades to retirees, active workers and others above and beyond normal benefits, costing the struggling city billions of dollars and helping push it into bankruptcy,

And they made it very difficult for outsiders to get the data necessary to "see" what they were doing. 

An investment banker now advising Detroit, Charles M. Moore, has said in a court declaration that the trustees of the general pension plan were “effectively robbing” the fund when they diverted its assets...

In Nashville, city pensions are underfunded by about half a billion, but our medical pensions are underfunded by about two billion.

3 comments:

  1. This truly concerns me. I will be one of those pensioners with a bankrupt fund if this isn't corrected.

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  2. luke,
    what exactly is the medical funds? are those part of the pension

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  3. What is it about any large pool of money put aside for a specific purpose that causes governments to decide that it can be used for something else now and replenished later (which never happens) or can be paid out in amounts that exceed what was paid in? And this idiocy is replicated everywhere!

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